A new critique of Israel proposes its elimination and replacement
with a bi-national Palestinian-Jewish state. Israelīs new detractors
doubt the legitimacy of Jewish statehood, though they say nothing
about the validity of dozens of new states that have emerged in the
last half century, many of which lack any firmly rooted national
identity. The new attack on Israelīs right to exist as a Jewish state
is particularly ironic since Jewish nationhood preceded the emergence
of most modern nation-states by thousands of years.

The new
critics of Jewish statehood neglect the fact that
Israelīs communal expression - like that of many communal states
around the world - in no way infringes the rights of minority
citizens, who enjoy full equality under the law and the political
system. They also ignore that this form of national expression is not
unique; indeed, most states identify in some formal way with the
religious or cultural heritage of their predominant communities. Yet
only Israel is singled out for criticism.

Israel is the
only state created in the last century whose
legitimacy was recognized by both the League of Nations and the
United Nations. The League of Nations Mandate did not create the
rights of the Jewish people to a national home in Palestine, but
rather recognized a pre-existing right - for the links of the Jewish
people to their historic land were well-known and accepted by world
leaders in the previous century.

By 1864, a clear-cut Jewish
majority emerged in Jerusalem - more
than half a century before the arrival of the British Empire and the
League of Nations Mandate. During the years that the Jewish presence
in Eretz Israel was restored, a huge Arab population influx
transpired as Arab immigrants sought to take advantage of higher
wages and economic opportunities that resulted from Jewish settlement
in the land. President Roosevelt concluded in 1939 that "Arab
immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total
Jewish immigration during the whole period."

Israelīs new
detractors seek to delegitimize Jewish national
rights by arguing that their assertion was an extension of European
imperialism. In fact, Jewish underground movements waged an anti-
colonial war in the 1940s against continuing British rule. Israel was
an anti-imperialist force when it first emerged, while the Arab
states were aligned with the imperial powers, their armies trained
and supplied by the French and British Empires.

There was no
active movement to form a unique Palestinian state
prior to 1967. In 1956, Ahmad Shuqairy, who would found the PLO eight
years later, told the UN Security Council: "it is common knowledge
that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." In the early 1960s,
many Palestinians looked to Egyptīs Abdul Nasser as their leader as
much as to any Palestinian. Given the historical background, it is
impossible to argue that the Palestinians have a claim to the Land of
Israel superior to that of the Jews, as Israelīs detractors
contend.

The new assault on Israel is partly based on
ignorance of Jewish
history in todayīs highly secularized world. But it also emanates
from a new anti-Semitic wave reflected in a public opinion poll by
the European Commission showing Israel as the country most regarded
by Europeans as a threat to world peace. The president of the
European Commission, Roman Prodi - alluding to the anti-Semitic
underpinnings that led to the pollīs results - said, "to the extent
that this may indicate a deeper, more general prejudice against the
Jewish world, our repugnance is even more radical."

The New
Anti-Zionists

Although Israel won its existence more than fifty
years ago, a new
and insidious critique has begun to spread, attacking anew the
legitimacy of Israelīs very establishment as a Jewish state. The new
line does not come from Tehran or Riyadh but, surprisingly from
largely European intellectuals and certain voices on the fringe
American Left, surfacing recently in The Guardian and The New York
Review of Books. It proposes the elimination of Israel and is
generally accompanied by calls to establish a bi-national Palestinian-
Jewish state in its place.1 The new anti-Zionists invariably start
with the claim that there are no Jewish rights to sovereignty in
Israel, or that, in any case, Jewish nationalism is inherently
unjust.

Curiously, this campaign is accompanied by no
corresponding questions
about the validity of any other of the more than 190 states that
belong to the UN, whether they resemble Israel or not. There is no
such scrutiny of the mini-states of Europe - from Liechtenstein to
the Vatican - or the multi-tribal states of Africa, many of which are
breaking down. Nor is there any questioning of the rights of
expressly Catholic, Protestant, or Muslim states to exist. The
exclusive focus on Israel raises troubling questions about the real
motives of these commentators. As Michael Gove, assistant editor of
the Times of London, recently noted: "I do not know how newspapers
can get away with it. You can have criticism of the State of Israel
but it is entirely different to say it shouldnīt exist. It is
applying to the Jew a different standard than you apply to anyone
else."2

Equally remarkable, for all the singular focus on
Israel, the attack
on Jewish statehood avoids even the slightest consideration of the
specifics of Israelīs case. The attackers fail to examine the legal
or political consequences of Israelīs national expression as a Jewish
state (perhaps because they find none) with regard to its non-Jews,
religious and racial equality, or the civil and political equality of
all citizens. They also ignore the specific historical circumstances
and perils that gave rise to the need for Israel to identify
Jewishly. In short, it is an attack on Israel without regard to the
cost, benefit, or uniqueness of Jewish statehood - indeed, without
any grounding at all. That becomes clear after a brief examination of
the history, the law, and the facts surrounding Israelīs existence as
a Jewish state.

The Rights of States and the Rights of Israel

International law has traditionally held that in order to be
defined
as a state, political communities must meet four qualifications:
First, there must be a people; second, there must be a territory;
third, there must be a government; and fourth, there must be a
capacity to enter into relations with other states. In advocating
Israelīs admission to the UN in 1948, the U.S. representative to the
UN Security Council argued that Israel fulfilled these conditions. In
fact, the new attacks on Israelīs rights are particularly ironic
since Jewish nationhood preceded the emergence of most modern nation-
states by thousands of years. Still, todayīs discourse has created
doubts about the basis of Jewish peoplehood and the connection of the
Jewish people to Israelīs territory. Whether the new assault on
Israel is a byproduct of the radical secularization of certain
intellectual circles who have no understanding of Jewish history, or
whether it emanates from a more insidious anti-Semitism that has been
re-born, its handmaiden is the general ignorance that is rampant
about Israelīs unique roots.

The Jewish claim to a right of
sovereignty in the Land of Israel
(Eretz Israel; Palestine) emerged in the last century for three
essential reasons:

First, it was not a new claim, but rather
a reassertion of a
historic right that had never been conceded or forgotten. Even after
the destruction of the last Jewish commonwealth in the first century,
the Jewish people maintained their own autonomous political and legal
institutions: the Davidic dynasty was preserved in Baghdad until the
thirteenth century through the rule of the Exilarch (Resh Galuta),
while the return to Zion was incorporated into the most widely
practiced Jewish traditions, including the end of the Yom Kippur
service and the Passover Seder, as well as in everyday prayers. Thus,
Jewish historic rights were kept alive in Jewish historical
consciousness.

Second, the security of the Jewish people in
the diaspora became
completely untenable as the threat from anti-Semitic persecution and
assault was replaced in the twentieth century with the threat of
actual annihilation - or genocide - as demonstrated by the Holocaust.
While this threat initially was focused in Europe, it soon extended
to the Middle East, as newly independent Arab states came to view
their ancient Jewish communities as European foreigners and
systematically violated their basic human rights, either by denying
them protection or by confiscating their properties. From the 1840
Damascus blood libel to the 1941 farhud (pogrom) against the Jews of
Baghdad, an uneasy Arab-Jewish coexistence that existed earlier
collapsed even before the rise of the State of Israel. Far from
receding, the danger of rabid anti-Semitism persists, thereby
necessitating a strong Jewish state that can serve as an ultimate
refuge for Jews under threat, anywhere. The Jewish people have
learned that they must not return to a state of
powerlessness.

Third, the steady growth of assimilation
threatened to eliminate
Jewish communities worldwide. The existence of a Jewish state, whose
public culture is based on the unique practices of the Jewish people,
is the best guarantor for Jewish continuity - both religious and non-
religious - and the birth of a new Jewish civilization that can
continue to contribute to the world community.3

Israelīs
Historic Basis: The Unbroken Jewish Connection with the Land
of Israel

Israel is the only state that was created in the last
century whose
legitimacy was recognized by both the League of Nations and the
United Nations.4 The League of Nations Mandate that was issued by the
victorious powers of World War I did not create the rights of the
Jewish people to a national home in Palestine, but rather recognized
a pre-existing right, for the links of the Jewish people to their
historic land were well-known and accepted in the previous century by
world leaders from President John Adams to Napoleon Bonaparte to
British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston.5 These rights were
preserved by the successor organization to the League of Nations, the
United Nations, under Article 80 of the UN Charter. The ancient, even
biblical, association of the Jewish people with the Land of Israel
was accepted in the Judeo-Christian tradition as a historical
axiom.

From a legal standpoint, an opportunity arose to assert
these
historically recognized rights. Since 1517, Eretz Israel had been
under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire; when the Ottomans lost
to the British in 1918, in the Treaty of Sevres they surrendered
sovereignty over their Asiatic territories outside of Turkey. A
vacuum of sovereignty was created in which the historic claim of the
Jewish people could be raised. Yet the Jewish people themselves had
begun raising it much earlier.

Since the loss of the Second
Jewish Commonwealth to Roman legions in
70 CE, and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Jewish
people never lost their connection to the Land of Israel (Palestine).
The land, in fact, was never claimed to be the unique home of another
nation, but rather was a province of other larger empires. As the
renowned historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, has
written:

... From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to
the beginning of
British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a
country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries; it was
a group of provincial subdivisions, by no means always the same,
within a larger entity.6

In the interim, the Jewish people never
stopped exercising their
claim to the land. Lewis, in fact, notes "there had been a steady
movement of Jews to the Holy Land throughout the centuries."7 In 135
CE Jews took part in the Bar Kochba revolt against imperial Rome and
even re-established their capital in Jerusalem. Defeated by the most
brutal of the Roman legions under the command of the emperor Hadrian,
Jews were forbidden to reside in Jerusalem for nearly five hundred
years. Once a year on the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, they were
allowed to weep at the remains of their destroyed Temple at a spot
that came to be called "the Wailing Wall." In the meantime, the Roman
authorities renamed Judea as Palestina in order to obliterate the
memory of Jewish nationhood.

During this period, the Jewish
national center shifted from Judea to
the Galilee, where hundreds of synagogues were erected from the
Mediterranean to the Golan Heights. Jewish law was then codified in
the Mishnah by Judah Ha-Nasi. Despite the catastrophic losses in
Jewish lives during the wars against the Romans, Jews still
constituted the majority of the population of the Galilee in the
fourth century. In the Upper Galilee village of Pekīin there remained
a continuous Jewish presence from the Roman era to the rise of the
State of Israel.

With the defeat of the Eastern Roman Empire
(Byzantine) by Persian
armies in 614, the Jewish people recaptured Jerusalem and made it
again their capital briefly. Yet Byzantine rule was soon restored and
Jews were forced again to vacate Jerusalem until the defeat of the
Byzantines in 638 by the Islamic armies of Caliph Omar, who again
opened the city for Jewish resettlement. Eretz Israel became a part
of successive Muslim empires - the Rashidun (the immediate followers
of the Prophet Muhammad, who ruled from Medina), the Umayyads (who
ruled from Damascus), the Abbasids (who ruled from Baghdad), and the
Fatimids (who ruled from Cairo).

Under Islam, Jews were to be
protected as a "people of the book," but
were nonetheless forced to pay discriminatory taxes like the jizya
(poll tax) and the kharaj (land tax). The crushing burden of these
land taxes led to a loss of Jewish land control in the Galilee during
the first several centuries of Islamic rule. During the Crusader
occupation of Eretz Israel, many Jews were physically slaughtered,
especially in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the great Jewish scholar and
poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141) still called for the mass
immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel.8

The beginnings of
Jewish recovery in Eretz Israel started with the
defeat and expulsion of the Crusaders in 1187 by the Kurdish Muslim
warrior Salah ad-Din who, like Caliph Omar, allowed the Jews to
resettle in Jerusalem. For example, between 1209 and 1211, three
hundred rabbis made their way from France and southern England to
settle in Jerusalem, once it was safe again to do so. They were
joined by rabbis from North Africa and Egypt. The great Jewish
scholar Nachmanides (Ramban) erected a synagogue in Jerusalem in 1267
that still stands in the Old City.

In the thirteenth century,
Jewish families restored the community of
Safed, which would become the international center for the study of
Jewish mysticism by the sixteenth century. Reinforced by their rising
numbers, Jews became assertive again about their claim in Jerusalem,
so that the pope forbade sea captains from transporting Jews to
Palestine in 1428.9 Despite the hardships, Jews continued to return.
The great commentator of the Mishnah, Ovadia Bartinura, left Italy to
settle in Jerusalem in 1488; his tomb is at the foot of the Mt. of
Olives.

The influx of Jewish refugees from the Spanish
Inquisition in 1492
into the Ottoman Empire, which took control of Eretz Israel in 1517,
led to a substantial expansion of the Jewish presence in Safed,
Hebron, and Tiberias, where Sultan Sulaiman the Magnificent allotted
his Portugese Jewish advisor, Don Joseph Nasi, land grants for Jewish
resettlement. Even before the rise of modern political Zionism, Jews
continued to stream into the land from Yemen and Lithuania, whose
numbers included the students of the halakhic scholar the Vilna Gaon
in 1809-1811. By 1864, a clear-cut Jewish majority emerged in
Jerusalem, more than half a century before the arrival of the British
Empire, the issuing of the Balfour Declaration, and the establishment
of the League of Nations Mandate.

The Palestinian Arabs Include
Waves of Arab Immigrants

During the restoration of the Jewish
presence in the Land of Israel,
the overwhelming impression of Western visitors in the nineteenth
century was that there were few Arab inhabitants. The British Consul
General, James Finn, wrote in 1857 that "the country is in a
considerable degree empty of inhabitants." He added that the
landīs "greatest need is that of a body of population."10 Mark Twain
visited Eretz Israel in 1867, traveled through the Jezreel Valley,
and related, "there is not a solitary village throughout its whole
extent."11 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, the great British cartographer,
reached similar conclusions in 1881: "In Judea it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that for miles and miles there was no appearance
of life or habitation."12

Geographers had long concluded that it
was improbable "that any but a
small part of the present Arab population of Palestine is descended
from the ancient inhabitants of the land"; indeed, according to their
analysis, Palestine was "peopled by the drifting populations of
Arabia, and to some extent by the backwash of its harbors."13
Additionally, the Ottomans settled Muslim populations as a buffer
against Bedouin attacks; Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian ruler, brought
Egyptian colonists with his army in the 1830s. It is noteworthy that
the common Palestinian name al-Masri, used by a clan in Nablus,
literally means "the Egyptian."14

Yet the Palestine Liberation
Organization has perpetuated a myth, put
forward on the world stage by Yasser Arafat at the United Nations in
1974, that "the Jewish invasion [of Palestine] began in 1881."
Moreover, he asserted that there was already a large indigenous Arab
population when the Jews arrived. His implicit message was that there
was a well-entrenched Palestinian society in place before Israelīs
rebirth, a society that had rights superior to those of the returning
Jews.

Yet it is now clear that during the years that the Jewish
presence in
Eretz Israel was restored, a huge Arab population influx transpired
from neighboring countries as Arab immigrants sought to take
advantage of higher wages and economic opportunities that resulted
from Jewish settlement in the land. Indeed, President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt concluded in 1939 that "Arab immigration into Palestine
since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total Jewish immigration during
the whole period."15

The Restoration of Israel Was Not a Product
of European Imperialism

Another common argument put forward by
the PLO is that Israel is
really the product of European imperialism and hence it does not
represent a legitimate national movement of its own. As a result,
Zionism came to be portrayed in the Arab world as "a hyperaggressive
variant of colonialism."16 This perception has also penetrated the
discourse of Israelīs European detractors. Initially, it is true that
the idea of a restored Jewish homeland received its greatest push
from the declaration in 1917 of the British Foreign Secretary, Lord
Balfour, who called for its establishment after the British defeat of
the Ottoman Empire. Yet, ironically, during the subsequent years of
the British Mandate over Palestine, European (and especially British)
imperial policies actually obstructed the emergence of the Jewish
national home.

First, the territory of Transjordan was cut off
from the Palestine
Mandate and granted by the British to the Hashemite dynasty from
Arabia, who had lost their ancestral homeland, the Hijaz, to the
Saudi clan of eastern Arabia. Second, the British sought to further
partition the remaining territory of western Palestine into Jewish
and Arab states, reducing the area for Jewish settlement even more.
Finally, with the 1939 White Paper, the British restricted Jewish
immigration into Palestine just as Nazi Germany began its conquest of
Europe and its Holocaust against European Jewry.

In this
context, it is not surprising that Jewish underground
movements waged an anti-colonial war in the 1940s against continuing
British rule. In other words, Israel was anti-imperialist when it
first emerged. By contrast, the Arab states at the time were aligned
with the imperial powers. The Arab states that invaded the nascent
State of Israel fielded armies that were trained and supplied by the
French and British Empires. During Israelīs War of Independence,
British officers commanded the Arab Legion of Transjordan, while the
Royal Air Force, defending Egyptian airspace, fought the Israeli Air
Force over the Sinai Peninsula in 1949. And the nations of the world
did not lift a finger when the Jews of Jerusalem were surrounded and
faced annihilation, even though the UN had called for
internationalization of the city. Only the Israel Defense Forces
broke Jerusalemīs siege and saved its Jewish residents. In short,
Jewish independence in Israel was won by a native and indigenous
community acting in its own defense with little help from
outside.

Is Jewish Statehood Discriminatory?

Today, some
argue that Israelīs very establishment as a Jewish state
discriminates against non-Jewish Israelis, even, as a recent article
claimed, rendering them second-class citizens.17 Such a claim is not
only utterly false, as any student of Israeli law or politics knows;
it also seriously distorts the harmless - and quite beautiful - ways
in which states can reflect the identity of their majority
communities, or pay tribute to their founding histories, without
infringing the rights of individual citizens. Israelīs critics go too
far when they seek to cloak Israelīs mere communal expression in the
inflammatory garb of religious discrimination.

Nearly every
country in the world boasts one majority community, and
nearly all reflect the cultural identity of that community in one way
or another. The United States officially celebrates only Christian
holidays; many European countries openly identify as either Catholic
or Protestant; and many Muslim countries uncontroversially refer to
themselves as an "Islamic Republic," whether they are democratic or
not. For some, such identification is simply a sign of the spiritual
persuasion of the majority; for others, it is homage to the story of
the countryīs founding. There is nothing obviously wrong with such
expression.

Indeed, in todayīs multi-culturalist environment,
with a renaissance
in public appreciation of communal identity, it is anachronistic to
suggest that in the case of Israel, alone, communal identification is
problematic. One can only wonder why Jewish national expression, with
no discriminatory effect, is so uniquely hard to bear.18 Perhaps the
reason stems from the history of opposition to Jewish statehood: it
was first raised by Arab nationalists and religious Islamic radicals,
who opposed Jewish rule on what they had deemed "Arab" soil. This
opposition, though prominent in the rhetoric of Palestinian groups
like Hamas today,19 is largely unacceptable in Western political
discourse. That forces its proponents to reformulate their anti-
Israel animus in the more universal language of rights and equality.
Still, as convenient a target as it seems, Israelīs self-expression
as a Jewish state, like the communal identification of any state, has
little bearing on questions of rights and equality.

The
important point is not whether a state adopts some communal theme
but whether it in fact discriminates: Are minority citizens equal
under the law? Can they express their own heritage publicly and
communally? Do they have the same opportunities for power and
representation in the system, even the ability to become the
majority? In short, are they first-class citizens?

For non-
Jewish citizens of Israel, the answer to all these questions
is "Yes. Unequivocally." Israeli Arab citizens are by law equal to
Jewish citizens; they enjoy the same rights and are legally protected
from discrimination. Non-Jews enjoy every freedom that democracies
recognize, including freedom of worship, the free expression and
exercise of religion, equality of financial, material, and employment
opportunity, political power, and all legal rights. Indeed, Israelīs
Declaration of Independence demands nothing less. According to the
Declaration, the Jewish state "will ensure complete equality of
social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of
religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion,
conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the
Holy Places of all religions." Israelīs Arab citizens have, in fact,
reached positions on Israelīs Supreme Court and have elected powerful
parties in the Israeli Knesset that fully participate in Israeli
political life.

Some critics of Israel, often with questionable
motives, exploit the
nature of Israelīs parliamentary political system to falsely depict
Arab citizens as a vulnerable minority. Indeed they are - but only
inasmuch as all minorities in a parliamentary government that are
outside the ruling coalition suffer some disadvantages. Israel
contains a lively system of distinct communities living side-by-side,
often vying for the same limited supply of the largely socialized
national welfare and aid programs. Israeli Arabs, for example,
compete with other minorities that do not typically reach the top -
ultra-Orthodox Jews, Russian immigrants, and religious Sephardim.
That some of these groups sometimes do better than others does not
show discrimination; it simply shows the system at work.

Most
important, however, the disadvantages of political minorities in
Israel have nothing to do with Israelīs ceremonious identification as
a Jewish state. Their situation will change if and when Israel
transforms itself from a system of proportional representation, with
each minority having a party to call its own, into a district-based
election system. Many Israelis support such a change, though it has
shortcomings, too. But even under the current, imperfect, political
reality, Jewish and Arab citizens are equal under the law.

All
this is not to deny that Israel has one special mission as a
Jewish state - albeit one that does not affect the rights of its non-
Jewish citizens. Israel was built as a haven for Jewish refugees
fleeing persecution. The legendary Israeli statesman Abba Eban
referred to this aspect of Israel as a case of "international
affirmative action," because it was designed to correct an inherent
disadvantage suffered by a particular group throughout history, which
has deprived them of a level playing field. Unfortunately, Jews still
need a place of refuge from persecution. For that reason, diaspora
Jews deserve the special treatment they receive in this one respect.
When the Jewish community of Ethiopia stood defenseless against the
onslaught of armed partisans in the 1991 civil war, or when
Argentinaīs Jews became the target of scape-goating and attacks
during the recent economic depression, or when Soviet Jews fled
Communism, Israel alone opened its doors unconditionally. For Jews
seeking refuge in Israel, the state grants immediate citizenship.
Nevertheless, a non-Jew enjoys the same right and opportunity to
become a citizen of Israel as any other country offers, including the
United States. And once a citizen, he or she enjoys all the rights
and privileges granted by Israelīs laws and government to the
majority of its people, based on a principle of equality now
enshrined in the basic law of the country and the fabric of its
political culture.

Israeli Rights Versus Palestinian
Rights

Still, regardless of the rights that Israel has granted
its non-
Jewish citizens, critics malign it on different grounds: that
Palestinians boast a stronger claim for national sovereignty over the
same land. This claim needs to be examined separately. In particular,
was there, prior to Israelīs establishment, a distinct Palestinian
nationalism vying for its own separate place in the land?

The
Palestinian Arabs originally saw themselves in the early
twentieth century as part of a greater Arab national movement. For
much of the first half of the last century Arab states sought to
unify as they supported various schemes for Arab unity. In Arabic
there are, in fact, two terms for nationalism: qawmiyah - loyalty to
the Arab nation as a whole, and wataniyah - loyalty to the local
country in which one resides. For decades, qawmiyah was far more
predominant for Palestinian Arabs.

For example, Bernard Lewis
has written that while the Palestinian
Arabs had a growing sense of identity with their struggle against
Jewish immigration in the 1930s, still "their basic sense of
corporate historic identity was, at different levels, Muslim or Arab
or - for some - Syrian; it is significant that even by the end of the
Mandate in 1948, after thirty years of separate Palestinian political
existence, there were virtually no books in Arabic on the history of
Palestine."20

Moreover, the 1947 Partition Plan still described
the Palestinians
as "Arabs" and called for an "Arab state" in Palestine alongside of a
Jewish state. In May 1956, Ahmad Shuqairy, who would found the PLO
eight years later, stated before the UN Security Council: "it is
common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."21 In
the early 1960s, many Palestinians looked to Egyptīs Gamal Abdul
Nasser as their leader as much as to any Palestinian. And there was
no active movement of the Palestinians to separate the West Bank from
Jordan or the Gaza Strip from Egypt to form a unique Palestinian
state prior to 1967. Today, a third source of loyalty is emerging
among Palestinian Arabs connected to Hamas or Islamic Jihad - loyalty
to the Islamic nation or umma. Hamas, after all, is the Palestinian
branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with pan-Islamic
ambitions.

Still, Israel recognizes that a unique Palestinian
national identity
exists today. But given its historical background, it is impossible
to show that Palestinian nationalism has a claim to the Land of
Israel superior to that of the Jews.

In the future, whatever
Palestinian political entity emerges from
part of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it very well might decide to
federate with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in ten or twenty years,
where a Palestinian majority already exists. In the Balkans, for
example, it is difficult for Europeans to predict the future of
Bosnia or Kosovo. Will their populations seek to unify with states
containing the same ethnic makeup, so that Croats in Bosnia will
merge with Croatia, while Kosovars will seek to unite with Albania?
The same long-term question applies to the Palestinian territories
after Arafat.

The Continuing Need for Jewish
Statehood

Regardless, a uniquely Jewish democratic society will
continue to
exist in Israel, where it will serve as a vital refuge for Jews
facing anti-Semitism from France, Russia, South America, or Yemen.
Israel remains the only country that allows unconditional Jewish
immigration. In a few years Israel will comprise the largest Jewish
community in the world. Only the army of the Jewish people, the
Israel Defense Forces, can protect that community.

Some now
argue that Jews no longer face the existential threats that
anti-Semitism once posed. It is even suggested that todayīs anti-
Semitism is caused, not counteracted, by Israeli policy. But the
recent experiences of Jews in Ethiopia, Argentina, and across Europe,
along with the vile slurs about world Jewry on the part of Islamic
leaders like Malaysiaīs Mohammed Mahathir, give lie to such euphoria.
Anti-Semitism has existed for centuries, well before the rise of the
State of Israel. Indeed, it could be argued that it is not the
reality of Israeli policy that is causing the new anti-Semitism, but
rather the prejudices of European editors who feature difficult anti-
Israeli photographs, out of context, as lead news items, while
downgrading serious cases of massacre, such as on the continent of
Africa.

Today, world leaders are willing to admit that the harsh
critique
that Israel receives can be traced to older, anti-Semitic roots. For
example, the president of the European Commission, Roman Prodi -
commenting on a new opinion poll showing that Israel is the country
regarded by most ordinary Europeans as a threat to world peace - said
the results "point to the continued existence of a bias that must be
condemned out of hand," and "to the extent that this may indicate a
deeper, more general prejudice against the Jewish world, our
repugnance is even more radical."22

There is even a new strain
of anti-Semitism that has emerged in the
radical opposition to globalization, which now targets Jews as a kind
of transnational economic force and, in chillingly familiar terms,
blames them for economic upheaval. The anti-Semitic threat,
unfortunately, is alive and well.

Not only is Jewish security at
stake but so is Jewish continuity.
Throughout Jewish history, national independence was perceived as a
condition for Jewish self-fulfillment.23 Redemption was tied to the
idea of return. For that reason, the re-birth of Israel strengthened
Jewish identity. A reversal of Jewish independence would clearly have
the opposite effect. As things stand, Jewish creativity in the future
will come increasingly out of Israel, as the Jewish state emerges as
the primary center of Jewish life. Just as the Jewish people of the
diaspora once contributed to the growth of modern civilization in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it will be Jewish civilization in
Israel that will be the key source of the Jewish contribution to
world society in the twenty-first century. A strong Jewish state is
essential for protecting the continuity of Jewish identity and its
place in world affairs.

Notes
1. Tony Judt, "Israel: The Alternative," New York Review of Books,
vol. 50, no. 16, October 23, 2003.
2. Lawrence Marzouk, "UK Media Blasted Over Israel," Barnet & Potters
Bar Times (UK), October 29, 2003;
http://www.barnettimes.co.uk/features/newsfeatures/display.var.427956.
0.uk_media_blasted_over_israel.php
3. Ruth Gavison, "On the Jewish Right to Sovereignty," Azure, Summer
2003.
4. Address by Prime Minister Netanyahu to the United Nations General
Assembly, September 24, 1998, Ministry of Foreign Affairs;
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0h3f0
5. Benjamin Netanyahu, A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the
World (New York: Bantam, 1993), pp. 14-15. For the sake of historical
perspective, one would do well to consider Ben-Gurionīs first
premise, the title deeds of the Jews to this land, which he presented
on January 7, 1937, to the Peel Commission:
"I say on behalf of the Jews that the Bible is our Mandate, the Bible
which was written by us, in our own language, in Hebrew, in this very
country. That is our Mandate. It was only recognition of this right
which was expressed in the Balfour Declaration."
6. Bernard Lewis, "The Palestinians and the PLO, A Historical
Approach," Commentary, January 1975: 32.
7. Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict
and Prejudice (New York: Norton, 1999), p. 164.
8. Arie Morgenstern, "Dispersion and the Longing for Zion, 1240-
1840," Azure, Winter 2002.
9. Ibid.
10. Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons)
p. 26.
11. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996), p. 349.
12. Netanyahu, A Place Among the Nations, pp. 38-40.
13. Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab, and British Policies (New
Haven: Yale University Press and Esco Foundation for Palestine, Inc.,
1947), v. 1, pp. 463-464.
14. Joseph Alpher, "Israel and the Palestinians: What Everyone Should
Know About the Conflict," Reform Judaism, Fall 2002, vol. 31, no. 1.
15. Netanyahu, A Place Among the Nations, p. 36.
16. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, "Graffiti on Historyīs Walls," U.S. News &
World Report, November 3, 2003.
17. Judt, "Israel: The Alternative."
18. Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? (New York:
Touchstone, 2003), p. 170.
19. "Hamas Leaders Vow to Press Fight Against Israel," Washington
Post, Briefs (December 27, 1999), p. A16.
20. Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semite, p. 186.
21. Harris O. Schoenberg, Mandate for Terror: The United Nations and
the PLO (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1989), p. 59.
22. Ed OīLoughlin, "Europe Apologizes to Israel for Poll, The Age
(Australia), November 5, 2003.
23. Marvin Fox, "Jewish Power and Jewish Responsibility," in Daniel
J. Elazar, ed., Jewish Education and Jewish Statesmanship (Jerusalem:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1996), p. 60.

Dore Gold is
President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Previously, he served as Israelīs Ambassador to the United Nations
(1997-1999). He is the author of Hatredīs Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia
Supports the New Global Terrorism (Regnery, 2003).

Jeffrey S.
Helmreich is the author of numerous articles on Israel for
American newspapers and journals. His most recent Jerusalem
Viewpoints include: "Beyond Political Terrorism: The New Challenge of
Transcendent Terror" (November 2001); "The Israel Swing Factor: How
the American Jewish Vote Influences U.S. Elections" (January 2001);
and "Journalistic License: Professional Standards in the Print
Mediaīs Coverage of Israel" (August 2001).